D&D 5E Running Old School adventures for 5e

[fjw70]

What old school D&D adventures have you run with 5e?

For my current campaign I started with the U series. Things went pretty good until they tried to wipe out all the lizardmen in U2 and nearly got a TPK (2 PCs dead and 2 captured). I even made the lizardmen weaker (half hp and only one attack) to account for the large numbers.

Then we sort of re-started buy having the new PCs rescue the surviving ones from slavery and moved onto the UK2 and UK3 series. That's going pretty good so far. I may have them go through the Slavers series eventually. Or maybe some other Greyhawk adventures (since the campaign is set in Greyhawk).

Since they failed to unite the lizardmen with the humans in U2 then the sahauagin will continue their plans unopposed and wipe out the lizardmen and attack Saltmarsh while the PCs are occupied elsewhere. So the PCs may still have to deal with them. We will see how it goes.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

B1-9, part of X1 (still wanting to finish, just don't get many sessions on the schedule with the appropriate player set).

I have plans for others too, but they haven't gotten off the ground just yet - thanks to the best "problem" a DM can every have; I've got too many players interested in too many campaigns so there is more to play than there is time to play it.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

I've run When a Star Falls (UK4 I think?), which was fun, but a lot of old FF monsters that aren't necessarily in the 5e core books - derro*, gibberlings, for example. Bit of testicular torsion to convert but doable. It was quite tough for the party, and I adjusted the two red dragon surprise to a single green, even so there was almost a TPK. (4 PCs which were levels 4-5 btw).

I've been eyeing up The Sentinel and The Guantlet myself - did it work well?

*i know derro are covered in SCAG or ROD, can't remember which, don't have either.

 

[Ath'kethin]

How old is old school? My 5e campaign started with Knight of Newts, Quest for the Silver Sword, and Rage of the Rakasta from the early 90s Thunder Rift subsetting. I then went to Barrow of the Forgotten King from 3.5e, and used it to transition to the Primeval Thule campaign setting. I use bits and pieces of old Conan modules now.

 

[Azzy]

I used Keep on the Borderlands to kick off my campaign. That went really well.

 

[fjw70]

How old is old school? My 5e campaign started with Knight of Newts, Quest for the Silver Sword, and Rage of the Rakasta from the early 90s Thunder Rift subsetting. I then went to Barrow of the Forgotten King from 3.5e, and used it to transition to the Primeval Thule campaign setting. I use bits and pieces of old Conan modules now.

Old School is as old as you want it to be.

 

[fjw70]

I've run When a Star Falls (UK4 I think?), which was fun, but a lot of old FF monsters that aren't necessarily in the 5e core books - derro*, gibberlings, for example. Bit of testicular torsion to convert but doable. It was quite tough for the party, and I adjusted the two red dragon surprise to a single green, even so there was almost a TPK. (4 PCs which were levels 4-5 btw).

I've been eyeing up The Sentinel and The Guantlet myself - did it work well?

*i know derro are covered in SCAG or ROD, can't remember which, don't have either.

Try this for converting the Monsters and see how it works.

http://swshinn.com/dnd-5e/5e-to-1e-combat-tracker/


We are not quite half way through the Sentinel yet but it is going well.

 

[fjw70]

I've run When a Star Falls (UK4 I think?), which was fun, but a lot of old FF monsters that aren't necessarily in the 5e core books - derro*, gibberlings, for example. Bit of testicular torsion to convert but doable. It was quite tough for the party, and I adjusted the two red dragon surprise to a single green, even so there was almost a TPK. (4 PCs which were levels 4-5 btw).

I've been eyeing up The Sentinel and The Guantlet myself - did it work well?

*i know derro are covered in SCAG or ROD, can't remember which, don't have either.

Try this for converting the Monsters and see how it works.

http://swshinn.com/dnd-5e/5e-to-1e-combat-tracker/


We are not quite half way through the Sentinel yet but it is going well.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Keep on the Borderlands (C)
Isle of Dread (B+)
White Plume Mountain (A)
Ravenloft (A+)
Tomb of Horrors (N/A)
Gates of Firestorm Peak (F)
Undermountain (D-)

 

[thorgrit]

So far the only older adventures I've modified to run in 5e have been Eberron. I started with The Forgotten Forge from the back of the 3.5 setting book, then proceeded directly to Shadows of the Last War. I was prepping to run the next one, Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, when Real Life intervened and that group more or less disbanded. I injected some Eberron flavor into The Sunless Citadel (the first WotC 3.0 adventure) and ran that for my current group. Its followup, The Forge of Fury, I lost interest in converting while we rotated DMs. (I've run more from both those series, but for different editions/systems.)

I was planning on converting half of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (the 3.5 adventure), cutting out or handwaving gratuitous combat scenes, some extraneous stuff, and looking to the original I6 Ravenloft for inspiration. (Setting it in Eberron, because that's what I do, following suggestions in EtCR.) It wasn't going to be my turn to DM for a while, so I was mainly just looking to prepare battlemats for the castle, when Curse of Strahd was announced. I would've just used it as a third source to plumb for ideas to put in my mishmash, but one of my players surprised me by buying the book himself and the players wanting to run the whole thing from level 1.